I seem to have been stuck on making Christmas cards in non-traditional colours lately. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I realised that almost all of my Christmas cards were that way. So, to prove that I’ve nothing against tradition, here’s one in red!

I love the gorgeous old-fashioned (sadly a set that retired last month) ornament here and I’ve paired it with the happy Noel text from a current set.

Base: 8.5″ by 5.5″ cherry cobbler

Top layer: 5.25″ by 4″ very vanilla

Stamp set: Ornament Keepsakes with matching framelit dies

Ink: Cherry cobbler

Other: Wondrous Wreath framelit dies

I stamped the ornament on a half sheet of very vanilla in cherry cobbler. Since I’d be running it through the big shot, I stamped other ornaments from the set at the same time so that I could cut out four for each crank through the big shot. Very useful if you’re trying to make multiple cards. I then grabbed my wax paper (liberated from the workshop in the basement where it’s used for all sorts of woodworking projects – I’d better buy more) and putting it between the card stock and the Noel die, ran it through the big shot. I find that a paper-piercing tool is very useful to poke through the holes in the die to get the card and die apart. Instead of the wax paper, I have tried using the embossing buddy or parchment but neither are as effective.

All that’s left now is to assemble the card. I like to use the grid paper to work on, finding that the lines are helpful in finding the centre of the card as well as helping text and images be straight. As you can see from the shadows, I popped the ornament up on stampin’ dimensionals; I tried stamping the ornament on the card, but it didn’t have that wow factor. I adhered the Noel text with the tombow glue carefully putting a splodge of glue on some spare card and carefully dotting it onto the noel with the small tip of the tombow. The adhesive remover is essential here for any slight errors. I finished the card off with the backgrounds DSP to line the envelope.